Extending rent caps to the Ile de France by 2018: a premature move

The Minister for Housing, Emmanuelle Cosse, announced today (June 30th, 2016) that the rental caps will be extended to all of the Ile de France communes by 2018.

To you remind, the rental caps mean that, in densely populated areas, the cost of a rental property (furnished or unfurnished) cannot exceed a rent benchmark that is set by the prefect. This rent benchmark is based on statistics produced by local observatories for rent, with 20% added to their figure. Furthermore, if a property offers a superior location or level of comfort and amenities, the landlord can demand a higher rent by adding additional charges.

This policy has been in effect for less than a year in Paris on an experimental basis (since August 1st, 2015), and today it’s still not possible to measure the impact it’s having on the private rental stock. Extending the rent caps to other areas therefore seems like a premature measure. Furthermore, initial records suggest that the these regulations aren’t always respected with rents having not gone down. In actual fact, there’s no evidence that they’re helping tenants find accommodation more easily.